“How do you know this?”
“She knows nothing. She is a fool.” Said the thing.
Jecha walked up to it, and stood within a few inches of its face. Still the face bore no expression that she could see, but she grabbed a small lamp and held it close to Bearmark’s eyes. “You’ve seen his eyes, Khoth, haven’t you?”
“Yes. I have seen them. His wife told me of them.”
“They are green like they should not be. And she complained to you that he does not seem himself sometimes, is that right?”
“Yes.”
Jecha nodded. “There is a reason you will not touch him, isn’t there? Because sometimes those who touch him do things that they should not, is that not so?”
“Seeress, how do you know such things?”
“I have seen this before.” She replied wearily. “There is a thing that lives inside of him now. It is a thing of evil intention. I thought that it must be so, on both sides of the river. You will have to kill him to rid him of it, and you cannot touch him, for it is a thing that spreads through touching.”
“To kill him? But can you not cure him of it?”
“I cannot. No one can. I am sorry.
“For the rest of you, you have seen him meeting with the woman from the ship and the tall man, is that right?”
They nodded in agreement. “And have any of you spoken to these people?”
“Only him.” One man said. “And sometimes he would return with gold in his hands.”
The thing in the man laughed, although his face showed no sign of it. “Fool’s gold, witchwoman. Fool’s gold for a fine fool.”
“Kill him.” She commanded. “But do not touch him with your hands. I must speak to the Ghaill of this.”
She walked to the Ghaill’s tent, and Yeg and Derry walked beside her. “Can you tell if a person has this … this thing?” Derry asked.
“Sometimes it is in the eyes, but usually only by the way they act. It is not easy. It is a treacherous thing, and something that should not be possible in Mortentia.”
“Why not here?” Yeg wondered.
“Because it is a thing of witchery, and that kind of magic has been dead in this land for thousands of years.”
They were shown into the Ghaill’s tent without undue ceremony, but before Jecha could speak to him, he spoke. “The ship, the Kalgareth, it was seen leaving Northcraven before the siege began. It went eastward. We had spies watching the city and taking note of such things.”
She paused. “And do you know where it is now?”
“Only that it passed away down the coast toward the city they call Tarnanvolle, but it could be anywhere by now.” She nodded.
“I must speak to you about how this war began, Ghaill.”
“How it began? Allein-a-Briech wanted this war. He planned it for a long time, told all of the bands to prepare to send warriors here, and he said it would be this year. We were expecting the late fall, not the spring, but we were all ready. We built many ships.”
“Not the shaman. What was it that started the war itself? Did it have to do with stolen children or babies?”
“Yes, the Mortentians stole children from us.”
“And on the other side of the river they are claiming that Auligs stole children from them. That is one of the reasons they say the war started. The king’s cousin, the ranger. He was coming to speak to you about it when he was killed.”
“We stole no children.”
“Yes you did.” She replied. “The thing that lives inside of Bearmarks stole them. But he did not steal Mortentian children. He stole Cthochi children and made it to look like the Mortentians did it. Somewhere on the other side of the river is a Mortentian who stole Mortentian children and made it to look like the Auligs did it. The thing that lives inside of Bearmarks started this war. Your shaman was readying you for a different war, a war that is to happen in the late fall or early winter of this year.”
“The stonecutters do not make war in winter, Jecha. Either way, we have been preparing to fight the Mortentians for a long time. It little matters what started it now, and the timing has not hurt us. We also prefer a summer war.”
“Except that by fighting the Mortentians you may be ignoring some other enemy. The Mortentians are not the only people in the world.” Jecha’s voice was calm, but she felt a flutter of fear in her heart at the words she had spoken.
Chapter 59: Lanae, Mortentia City, various other points
Lanae slid wearily from Sentinel’s back and stripped off her flying leathers, and she did not stop pulling off the sweat-soaked garments until she was clad in only her shift. She hung her leathers on hooks set in the stone wall. She grabbed a long poled wooden scraper from the wall and spent half of an hour scraping shit and dirt from the corners of Sentinel’s eyrie, for the great eagle always seemed happier when his nest was clean. This was not Sentinel’s usual eyrie, but for some security reason that Lanae did not understand Bansher had insisted that she house her eagle in a different eyrie each night. This meant cleaning out a new eyrie at the end of every mission, for none of the other eagles was as fastidious as Sentinel, and they shat in their own nests, which he never did. He would not rest easy until the chamber was clean.
She piled up the accumulated crap and dirt and simply pushed it out of the eyrie, allowing it to fall in a nasty heap down on the ceiling of the lower floors, where servants were still permitted to clean it up and dispose of it. From what she had heard, the bird shit was prized by farmers and gardeners as fertilizer, which sometimes made her look askance at her carrots and turnips at dinner.
She was just back from a visit to the Privy Lord up in Walcox, Lord Aelfric D’root, if you please. The nickname of Privy Lord had become ubiquitous, even here in the King’s Town, and nobles and generals and the king himself said the title with their faces completely straight. It was a strange world.
Truthfully the missions were a relief for Lanae. In her flying leathers she could forget her humble origin and she felt part of something important, even if it was a war. When she reported her news to Bansher he treated her respectfully, and complimented her skill or criticized her lapses with an evenhanded and professional detachment that was in sharp contrast to the rest of her weary life in the King’s Town.
The dismissal of the servants came as a relief to Lanae in some ways, for there were no people about to see her as she walked around the eagles’ nests, and no servants to give her their judgmental looks at being clad in only her linen shift. Well, not just her shift. Bansher insisted that she go armed at all times, so she wore a belt and a scabbarded dagger over the night clothes, which she knew looked ridiculous. But it was Levin’s dagger, and she’d ordered the scabbard especially made by a leatherworker for the price of a silver penny. It was a comfort to her to carry it, for she knew she could protect herself with it, and she knew she could kill with it at need. She had.
It was good to be away from prying eyes in the eyrie, and good to be away from the judgmental stares and the down-the-nose glares that went with being the queen’s low-born, eagle-riding pet. She went down the stairs to her apartment, ordered hot water for a bath, and looked at her personal mission board. Tomorrow, courier flight to Zoric. Tonight … Srari’s Blessing! An invitation to dine at the palace.
To the gossiping wives of dukes and barons and petty lords she was the ‘Queen’s Eye,’ she knew. To some she was Eleinel’s pet. The little prince, not even two months old, did not yet have a name for her, but she fancied that his eyes lit up just a bit when she arrived to rock him or carry him or let him suck on her little fingers. Being with him almost made up for the nasty gossip that she knew followed her around.
Dinner at the palace could mean a quiet meal with just the queen and the prince (and half a dozen servants and the ladies-in-waiting), or it could mean a formal dinner with half of the nobility of the King’s Town present. The first meant a good meal in fine company, and she only had to guard her tongue when the gossipy ladies-in-waiting
were around. The second meant an interrogation in polite form, with not-so-subtle questions meant to gain some sort of advantage in the incomprehensible games of power and viciousness that were the very definition of court life. Being ‘on the king’s business’ and ‘not privileged to discuss such matters’ could only take one so far when the questioner was the rat-faced Lord Mayor of Kancro or the incredibly arrogant Duke of Elderest. These were people not used to being denied by mere farmers, king’s eyes or not, and sometimes she was forced to rely on the king or the queen herself to come and rescue her from such conversations.
She sighed, slipping down into the hot and sudsy water and wishing she could lay in the tub all night. It was too bad that the king had men who watched the eyrie and so knew when she had arrived. The king’s servants would wait a ‘suitable time’ for her to ready herself, and then politely knock on her door and ask if she needed assistance in getting ready for dinner.
An invitation to dine at the palace was not something she could decline. She washed her hair and climbed out of the deep stone tub, regretful of the waste when she pulled the cork stopper and allowed the hot water to escape down the drain. Such a full tub of hot and soapy water would have bathed her entire family up Walcox way, and they would probably have tossed Bully in there too, once they were done. Dogs could stink in Diremonth’s heat.
Perhaps it was the dagger, or perhaps it was meeting with Aelfric, who so closely resembled his brother, but she thought of Levin Askelyne … Levin D’root, she supposed, while she reviewed the clothing laid out for her by the servants. It was outlandish garb, according to the ladies-in-waiting, but Bansher insisted that she wear divided skirts or men’s pants at these events, a not-so-subtle reminder that she could be called away for a flight in an instant. Other than the pants, her clothing was virtually identical to that worn by the ladies at court, if not of so fine material or cut. She had been scandalized to learn that the Duchess of Dunwater’s dress cost as much as two farms in Walcox.
Levin Askelyne. She had only known him for maybe five minutes, and they were desperate minutes fighting for her life and that of her eagle, but he had made an impression on her. What was he, nineteen? Twenty? That was not so old. She was fifteen now, although she had completely forgotten about her birthday. On the sixteenth of Tallis she had been a prisoner of the Brizaki, and she did not think Jahaksi would have made much of her turning fifteen. Well, maybe he would have. Why think of him, though? Levin had been so handsome and strangely dashing, with his scruffy sailor’s beard and his noble’s speech. He was much more to her thinking than Jahaksi, although she supposed both of them had saved her life, in their own ways. Anyway, Jahaksi was dead and rotting on the bottom of the Tolrissan Sea, along with every other Brizaki the Thimenians had slaughtered.
At fifteen she was the oldest of the king’s eyes, and should have been retired early this summer, but she was the only one who could fly Sentinel, and he was positively possessive when it came to her. She supposed she felt the same way towards him. There were so few of them left! Sky had been killed on the twenty-ninth of Merryis, shot down by arrows on approach to a supposedly safe landing near Tarnanvolle, and poor Miriella killed in the crash, coming down from over a hundred paces into a piny wood. The dogs found her, Bansher had said with a frankness that was brutal, found her in pieces.
So the king’s eyes were reduced to eight, and Darkfeather still wild and difficult, although their newest girl Corrie, whose real name was some Flanesi monstrosity like Corielliendera, had taken a liking to the troubled eagle, and was spending a lot of time with it. It was a smart play on Corrie’s part, if she wanted flying time, and good for the eyrie, too. Perhaps it was bias based on her own special relationship with Sentinel, but Lanae thought that the long-term pairing of rider and eagle was a better system than the rotations Bansher was used to. With four eagles committed to running errands for the greater houses and Darkfeather unreliable, Lanae knew that she would soon be running scout for the war. It was a frightening prospect, but only a little more frightening than the thought of enduring a formal dinner at the palace.
She put on the formal attire and prepared for battle.
Barely an hour and a half later, her carriage returned to the eyrie, and she with it. With eyes reddened by unshed tears, she stumbled through the carriage door, barely remembering to take the proffered hand of the footman. She tried to maintain her dignity and hold up her head as she entered the eyrie, but once safely within its walls, she ran to her apartment and flung herself face-first onto the bed. She kicked the blankets furiously for a moment, gaining control over her tears.
Srari’s love, what a fool she was. As stupid as her scatterbrained sister sometimes, and that was saying a lot, honestly. All this over a boy.
She’d met him previously twice, a handsome boy and almost a man, and their exchanges had been so courteous and restrained that she didn’t even remember his name, only his title. Bansher had told her it was important to remember such things, and his was the Junior Earl of Eklia, a city on the border between Dunwater Duchy and Pulflover Barony. She didn’t really know what a Junior Earl was, exactly, but he was important in commerce and trade and other boring things.
Tonight he’d been perfectly wonderful, right up until the moment when he was perfectly terrible. His name was Rybold D’Ellishelle, and it was an important house. They had eaten next to each other, shared buttered rolls and conversation, and he had smiled with perfect teeth in a perfect face and his eyes had been an amazing deep-sea blue. Their conversation had ranged from farming conditions in Walcox, which he seemed to know a lot about, to the war, to dancing and music and all kinds of other things. He had adroitly avoided any discussion about his station or rich carriages or servants or any other thing that would have reminded her of her humble origins. It had been a perfectly wonderful conversation and he had been a perfect gentleman, right up until he wasn’t.
It was what the queen called a short-course dinner, and the servants only brought food to her table twice, and all very quickly, so that the eating part of dinner took only half an hour. In Lanae’s experience this was probably a speed record at the palace, and half of the servants had no idea what to do once the guests left the dinner tables.
Musicians had been brought in, and the dulcimer and flute and drum played not too loudly. She had stumbled through the group dances, high-stepped the reel and he had been beside her constantly, laughing and smiling and perfect. Then came the long Saltzarel, and he took her hand and led her gracefully in the steps, and the whole time she never noticed as they drifted in circles that they were straying farther and farther from the rest of the company, until she could barely hear the music.
She looked up at him and said, “We should get back to the others.”
“I wanted to be alone with you, Lanae. You are very beautiful.” For a moment she could only stare in wonder. Beautiful? Her? She was skinny and short and her nose was too long and her breasts were virtually non-existent. No one had ever called her beautiful.
“I am?” She’d said, like a fool.
“You are.” He’d replied, and for half a second she’d believed him. But then his hand was where it shouldn’t have gone and his tongue was in her mouth and she was pressed against the wall by his great and strong body. There were no servants around, and she felt terribly vulnerable until Bansher’s training kicked in. He had been pressing his manhood up against her, right above her waist, and she put him down hard with her knee, remembering another boy who had said she probably had a ‘sweet cunny.’
But rather than the angry reaction she had expected, Rybold had sat down hard, with tears in his eyes, and asked her why she’d done it. “I thought you wanted me, too.” He’d said, and in that moment she’d realized that he was just a clumsy boy and a fool, not a rapist, and she had humiliated him and hurt him to no purpose.
It had been her turn to feel humiliated and stupid, and her there at the invitation of the queen and everything. In horror she had summoned h
er carriage and fled, feeling completely her lack of sophistication and understanding of the ways of boys and girls, nobles and common, women and men. She was just fifteen.
Srari’s blessings, what a fool she was.
She considered the repercussions of what she had done while she shed her fancy clothing and changed into simple clothes. She washed the powder from her face in her little basin of water gone cold, and wiped away all of the traces of her tears. She had left the party early, without saying good night to her hostess, the Queen of all of Greater Mortentia. She had not danced with the king, which was customary. She had not stayed for late drinks or discussion or the many tedious and wonderful things that were a part of every formal meal she had attended in the palace. She hoped she had not caused the queen any distress.
She hated all of this, she realized. She loved the queen and she loved the little prince and she like the king, but the rest of it? The fancy dresses and the overly rich food and the idle and prying conversations? They were all spies and conspirators, and each and every one of them angling for something, and she was forced to endure it for the sake of her friendship with Eleinel.
At least she had Sentinel and Bansher. Tomorrow she would face the queen, or at least send her a note of apology. For tonight she was done with playing games with royalty. She would check on her eagle, really her best friend, and go to bed.
Dressed in ordinary clothing and with her face scrubbed clean, Lanae left her apartment and climbed the spiral staircase to the king’s eye common room. On the way she noticed that the two guards who normally stood by the door to the common room were absent. It was late at night, but they should be at their posts. Cautiously, she cracked the heavy door and looked into the common room, but it was empty. The two guards who were supposed to be watching the door to the eyrie were also missing, and the door was ajar.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 70